


Apart

by sans_patronymic



Series: Apart [3]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Major Illness, POV Sherlock Holmes, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 22:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12375075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sans_patronymic/pseuds/sans_patronymic
Summary: Holmes doubts their relationship as Watson's illness keeps them apart.





	Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/gifts).



It is shortly before Christmas when Watson falls ill. Too ill to travel says the first telegram; too ill to get out of bed says the second. A spot of ‘flu, he thinks, but he isn’t sure. Physicians do make the worst patients. We spend the holiday apart and I remind myself that I am not sentimental about those sorts of things.

By the end of his third bedridden week, I forsake our rule and begin to write to him. Not the usual terse wires, but letters: long ones full of silly, unimportant happenings and pointless musings on the weather. Never have I written so much about nothing. He writes back rarely and it is clear from the neat, square handwriting that he is out of practice in cryptography.

I do not dare go to London. Once, I am desperate enough to go to town and call him on the telephone. His voice is tired and tinny through the wires and he is interrupted every so often by a coughing fit. Pneumonia, he has decided, and a stubborn case at that. I do not call again.

Winter wanes and I stop writing letters; I have run out of nothings to say. There are only two possibilities: that he is still ill, or that he is lying. It is impossible to conclude which is true. Watson has never been a liar, but the snow melts and there is no word for two weeks. Today, I am furious he has deceived me so despicably; tomorrow, I am convinced he has died and I will be the last to hear of it. I cannot decide which is worse. My teeth grind themselves flat, debating it.

I am replanting my garden when the telegram finally arrives:

> SH—
> 
> AM FINALLY RETURNED TO MY SENSES.   
> WILL BE COMING DOWN NEXT FRIDAY IF CONVENIENT.   
> IF INCONVENIENT COMING DOWN ALL THE SAME.
> 
> —JW

I should not find his glibness funny, if the telegram were not reply-paid. I write my assent and spend the week trying to turn my lair back into something hospitable. The front room needs airing; my barium hydrosulfites have taken over the desk in the parlor; books have been picked up on a whim and abandoned near armchairs until whole sections of my library have grown into stalagmites on the floor. I have not yet concluded how to feel about Watson’s return—furious, delighted, terrified—instead, I chose to feel nothing. I wind the clock on the mantel for the first time this year and let it toll away the hours until our reunion.

His trunks arrive first. When I open the door to see Hastings with large, rectangular boxes in his cart, my heart catapults into my throat before I realize what they are. It is a feeble mind that sees coffins everywhere. We put two in the front room and the rest in the parlor; six in all, one for every decade of life, each bearing the initials JHW. I open them all, digging for answers.

The front door opens and closes. Wet boots are wiped and a macintosh is tossed over the back of the settee. Watson stands in the doorway, thin as a rail and pale as can be. When I rush to him, I am not embarrassed to be eager.

“I see you’ve decided to help me unpack.”

“Hardly. I was snooping.”

“And what did you discover?”

“It would seem you intend to be here for some time…”

“If the invitation still stands.”

We attempt a facsimile of an embrace. It’s tricky: I am stricken with nerves and holding a cigarette in one hand. Even beneath a wool suit I can feel how gaunt he has become. Guilt seeps up through my toes.

“How do you feel?”

“Oh, not bad. Still a bit weak, but… perhaps that’s just age.”

“Nonsense!” I cry, “Look at you, your spine like a ramrod, straighter than any tin soldier.”

“Holmes...“

My eyes fall to the floor. I cannot face him; it is like facing a ghost. The guilt is up to my knees. He reaches for my cigarette, catches my wrist and smokes from my hand. He smiles as he exhales.

“Sorry, I haven’t had a smoke in over six weeks.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starved.”

There is pheasant for supper and Watson eats with ferocity. As I am telling him about my plans for the garden, he grows more spectral. In the yellow kitchen light, he is the haggard young soldier who met a stranger in the chemical labs at St. Bart’s and agreed to share digs with him. The man who is still endlessly trusting, who has not yet grown weary of my lies. The Ghost of Watson blinks at me with a look of the most profound innocence and I want nothing more than to crush it.

“I missed you at Christmas.”

He nods around a mouthful of potatoes.

“Why did you stop writing?”

“You stopped writing to me. Why didn’t you come to London?”

I am hit in the gut by the hammer fell. The answer sits heavily in the air. It is a fear that gnaws on my spleen and sleeps curled up in my throat. A fear that I should find him beyond hope; that I should not be able to comport myself; that I should come apart and that all of London should know from the sight of me what I truly am. It is the same reason I telephoned but once, why my letters ceased. 

My tongue is dry and awkward in my mouth. 

“I don’t know,” I answer numbly. 

When Watson looks at me, his eyes shine with an understanding so deep that it soaks me down to the bones. He takes my hand across the table. The clock in the parlor cries eight.

We spend the night in Watson’s room—for it _is_ Watson’s room now—holding one another as if for the first time. I drown him in quilts, terrified of draughts. His cough is gone and we talk uninterrupted. The worn out conversations go differently from here on; we put the hammers away and slowly begin to pick up the pieces.

It is a week later that I first see the moles again. A bit of disturbed earth near the kitchen door, a lump in the lawn and, worst of all, my freshly transplanted cabbages are ransacked. I am so furious I march Watson out to the scene of the crime. He puts his hands in his pockets and shakes his head.

“That isn’t moles,” he announces.

“Of course it’s moles; just look at my lawn!”

“Yes, _that’s_ moles. But this, _this_ isn’t moles. What would moles want with cabbages? You’ve probably got rabbits over in those brambles.”

“Rabbits?”

I look back at my garden bed. The evidence presents itself: a half dozen muddy prints and a sticky pile of droppings. My eyes move to the hedgerow just in time to spot a brown fluff disappear into the branches. It is undoubtedly rabbits.

“What the devil am I going to do about _them_?”

Watson lays his hand upon my shoulder and kisses my temple.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “We’ll think of something.”


End file.
